Not to mention the fact that the whole point of the data being secret means people don’t find about it, nor do people get very clear information from their credit card and insurance companies anyway.

So there’s another reason to oppose mass illegal immigration: it unfairly distorts the relative political strengths of the states. Texas owes Maine an electoral vote.

In 1860, several states (Wisconsin, California, Minnesota) had populations that were more than 50% foreign born, and several others had populations that were more than a third foreign born. While many of these people would have been citizens (I couldn’t easily find numbers for percent non-citizen), many of them were not.

So, I’m trying to figure out something. Should the Census be required to determine the citizenship of the people it’s counting in order for it to be doing the job it was Constitutionally created for?

Apportionment of Congressional representation among the states are, as far as I can tell, based on two parts of the Constitution. First, Article I, Section 2, paragraph 3:

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. …

and Amendment XIV, paragraph 2:

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Plus Amendments XV and XIX, which ensure the right to vote for all persons irrespective of race or sex, and would thus seem to modify Amendment XIV, which calls out male citizens only.

So Article 1 and Amendment XIV call out “free persons” and “persons”, leading one to believe that representation is to be allocated on the basis of the number of persons in a given state, and not citizens only. Yet, Amendment XIV goes on to say that if any citizens of a given state are denied the vote (e.g., if only whites are permitted to vote), then the number of representatives allocated to that state should be reduced proportionately, which would seem to relate representation to the number of voters in the state.

So I know how I’d regard this. My guess is that when this was all written, no one expected that there would be a significant disparity between the number of persons in a given state and the number of citizens. But my question is, what’s the law? Are representatives supposed to be allocated on the number of citizens in a given state, or the total number of people, including both legal and illegal aliens? Has the question been considered or adjudicated?

A National ID card is not something I want to see. It makes me very uncomfortable. And I agree with Robert that the gathering of information by the State is inherently dangerous to liberty. But given the security situation we need some way to be able to track non-citizens’ movements. That part of the Real ID program where one’s drivers license has to be specifically marked as to whether or not the holder is a citizen seems a reasonable compromise (I hold out no commentary on the rest of the Real ID act).

Because terrorists have no knowledge of how to make fake ID? Because terrorists are never citizens? Because treating all non-citizens as potential terrorists seems like an effective or productive or just way to find the 1 in several million who is a terrorist?

The argument that market forces can prevent data from being stolen or misused doesn’t really seem to apply in the current market. Not to mention the fact, that these companies (and government run agencies) have been lax in reporting data theft.

As the population shifts around the country, rather than adding representatives, they just move the votes to where the greater population is. For example, states like Ohio, Massachusetts, and Michigan are losing votes, and states like Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada are gaining votes. I’m fairly certain that the population is not just determined by voting age citizens, children count and people who are not citizens also count. They don’t ask about your status in the country, and on the short form, they don’t even ask if you are a citizen or not.

Rachel S., I have a question; what is the meaning of the word “voting” in this?

In fact, given it’s Constitutional mission, one piece of information that should be a very high priority for the Census should be determining whether or not the people being counted are citizens, as non-citizens shouldn’t be used to allocate Congressional representation.

A National ID card is not something I want to see. It makes me very uncomfortable. And I agree with Robert that the gathering of information by the State is inherently dangerous to liberty. But given the security situation we need some way to be able to track non-citizens’ movements. That part of the Real ID program where one’s drivers license has to be specifically marked as to whether or not the holder is a citizen seems a reasonable compromise (I hold out no commentary on the rest of the Real ID act).

But this posting speaks directly to that. Again, from her post:

Of particular concern was immigrant communities where residents did not have a legal status in the US. Although the law prohibits Census data from being used to round-up undocumented immigrants, such actions (releasing microdata) do not allay such concerns in these communities. The outcomes of not being counted affect such immigrant communities, but they also affect the larger communities when their funding for local projects is allocated based on smaller population projections. Local level funding, voting, and other population concerns such as low income housing demands or educational needs are harder to meet when the Census Bureau undercounts population.

The position that it seems to me that Rachel is taking is that if the Census Bureau releases fine-grained data to the rest of the government, illegal aliens will no longer trust the Census Bureau enough to provide the data and their presence will be undercounted. That in turn will mean that insufficient funding will be provided to the local government agencies to meet their housing, educational and other needs. In other words, the Census Bureau should be stopped from sharing this data (from a functional viewpoint, not a legal one) because the end result will be that funding for their needs won’t be allocated. I’m replying directly to the expression of concern there. I’m saying that there are preferable solutions to this problem other than stopping the Census Bureau from ceasing to provide this information.

If not, then attacking the release of census data makes sense. but i have a hard time not saying “yes” to this, at least in theory. information gathering is quite different from action. informed action is–theoretically, at least–better than uninformed action.

2) Is the census data something inherently appalling to release?

I don’t think so. It’s not like, say, library data, or reading someone’s diary. I think there are some dastardly and ultra-intrusive things the government does to folks. But learning what one does for work, or where one lives, doesn’t seem to me to be in that category. And, as we all know, this data isn’t really private anyway these days.

3) Are the benefits of not releasing the census data greater than the benefits of releasing it? Or, is the harm of release greater than the benefit of release?

Hard to say. A lot of folks claim that distrust of the government is going to screw up census information. but it’s inaccurate look at ABSOLUTE values. We have to look at CHANGES in values.

that is to say, it is incorrect to assign this release as the “cause” of the general distrust. Yes, illegal immigrants and other folks don’t like to give their data to the census. But did this action really change things that much? they didn’t like to give their data before, either.

If the detriment of releasing the census data is small, then the benefit can be small (but relatively larger) and still justify the release.

Private data collection usually poses a threat only when it falls into the wrong hands, particuarly the government’s. And that can happen, but the government usually has to force them to hand it over, and they often fight it, because companies look bad when they voluntarily hand over data on their customers. This creates visibility. On the other hand, when one government agency uses data collected by another government agency, we may never hear about it. This makes it easier for the government to abuse publicly collected data than private data.

Also, it’s worth noting that the government has tried to force private companies to collect more data because the data they were collecting voluntarily didn’t have enough potential for abuse (e.g., Know Your Customer, all kinds of tax-related stuff, and IIRC some new requirements the Bush administration introduced, though I can’t remember what they are at the moment).

In that case, my answer is: I think the discussion of whether or not tax dollars should be spent helping illegal immigrants isn’t very on topic for Rachel’s post. It’s a pretty generic argument, frankly, and we shouldn’t have the 50th round of it here.

Why should the Federal government count illegal aliens?

Because knowledge is better than ignorance.

I don’t like the idea of a national ID. Camera coverage of public areas I’m not fond of, but can live with; key word, public.

Okay, yes, it is dangerous. Less dangerous than having a standing army, but more dangerous than bunnies. Is it any more or less dangerous when it is a government doing it or when it is a private corporation (or an academic researcher) doing it?

Michael,

Both a national ID card and the British style omni-surveillance make me nervous. Unlike census data, for which I can see a pressing need, I don’t see a pressing need for either omni-surveillance or national ID cards. The British omni-surveillance didn’t prevent the London Underground bombing, and the US was able to ID all of the 911 bombers without omni-surveillance, so I’d need some convincing that omni-surveillance is useful against terrorism (which seems to be the main excuse for it).